Moments Before
by Uozumi
Summary: McCoy died while Kirk was planetside. Chapel relates the events leading up to his death. Close third person POV.


**Fandom** _Star Trek_(AOS)  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)** Chapel, Kirk, M'Benga, McCoy, assorted medical, random ensign; take any pairings as you will  
**Genre** Death/Drama  
**Rating** PG  
**Word Count** 1895  
**Disclaimer** Star Trek c. Paramount, CBS, Roddenberry  
**Summary** McCoy died while Kirk was planetside. Chapel relates the events leading up to his death. Close third person POV.  
**Warning(s)** some allusions to and minor spoilers for _Star Trek_ TOS' episode "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" and major character death  
**Notes** This just came tumbling out after I started thinking about xenopolycythemia in relation to AOS. It became bigger than I intended. This fic makes assumptions that there would be an autopsy room near Sickbay.

_**Moments Before**_

Her hand hovered only a second before resting on his shoulder. The smell of decay was beginning to hang in the air near the dead body on the biobed. The body would have to be moved to a cooler in the autopsy room before the smell could grow strong enough to permeate all of Sickbay. She could tell that Kirk thought that letting the smell overtake the bay would be appropriate. Everyone should know of this death.

But everyone did know. Hell, everyone in this Sickbay had known before he had known. She squeezed his shoulder tightly. "I must move him, Captain," she said quietly. "He needs to rest in a cooler." There would be an autopsy and then a funeral in the coming hours and days. She managed to keep her voice even, calming by playing procedure repeatedly in her head. First, she would move the body to the portable tray, and then she would take it to the room filled with what were called coolers. They were refrigerators designed to hold dead bodies in space only to autopsy. It would be impossible to bring anyone home to Earth or their home planet once they died in space. After the body cooled, M'Benga would probably call for her and then…

"What happened?" Kirk's voice was so hollow; she almost did not hear it.

"A coronary – "

"No," he took a breath, "what _happened_, Christine?" His hazel eyes averted from the body on the biobed to meet hers. "How did Bones get…" to this point? So sick? Kirk had known something was off in the past few months, but this was unexpected.

Chapel took a seat beside him on the small bench beside the bed. It was in a backroom away from the main area of in and out injuries. She put her hand on his arm carefully. Her mind flickered to a memory from years ago when they were both in the academy. It had been a rain soaked night and he came upon her after she ran from Roger Korby's house of growing horrors. She closed her eyes and made herself focus. Kirk had found her on a bench in the park that night, but this small bench was where her mind needed to be, for him and for the body that lay on the biobed before them.

"It was spring," she stated slowly. "We were doing routine medical examinations on the medical staff…."

She knew McCoy had seen the brief change in her expression. She could feel his eyes on her, but she could not look at him, not yet. "I need to run some additional tests." She finally looked at him. It was regulation that medical staff could not give themselves their own physical. It was only one month before M'Benga would join the staff and thus, as the second-highest ranking medical staff member, Chapel was administering McCoy's physical. "Don't worry, it might be nothing." She smiled.

McCoy rolled his eyes and sat up so she could take the blood sample. "I'm a doctor, not some over anxious ensign."

Chapel took his blood and then secured the sample. "I'll run this and get back to you."

She had the results a few days later. She stood outside McCoy's office, just outside of range of the door's sensors. She had run the tests three times, but she was exceptional at what she did and even when she wished to be wrong, she was right. Taking a breath, Chapel moved into the door's sensors. Within moments, the door opened upon McCoy's vocal approval. She stepped in, clutching her PADD tightly, deciding not to speak until the door swished shut behind her.

McCoy looked up from his viewscreen where he had been transferring over data from his PADD into the appropriate files. "Christine, what is it?" It was not an emergency or she would not have stepped so far into the room.

Chapel knew she was being ridiculous. She should just say it. This was her boss. This was Leonard. She could tell him as she would tell anyone else. "Your results are in." She handed him her PADD. "It's xenopolycythemia." She watched his blue eyes scan over the test results and his own bio readouts. "I followed procedure." Procedure was a shift in how laundry handled McCoy's sheets and clothing. There were also some dietary restrictions placed upon his diet card now as well. There was no cure and no real way to make it better.

"By my estimates, you've had it three months now," she added. He knew the prognosis from there. He had nine more months if he was lucky.

McCoy remained silent. His stylus scrolled through the data on her PADD. Then his eyes moved to hers. "Don't let Jim know."

Of course, there was doctor-patient confidentiality, but there were ways around it when it came to crew being unable to do their jobs. Someone unable to do their jobs could mean death for others depending on their job aboard the ship.

"I'll hold my tongue until I can't," Chapel promised. They still had a few months until it would begin to affect McCoy's ability to do his job.

The ship shook from an impact, punctuated by the red alert sounding. Chapel braced herself on McCoy's desk and then quickly left the office once the shaking ceased to prepare Sickbay for potential casualties. Once the red alert died down, Kirk appeared and dragged McCoy off to the transporter figuratively. Kirk was talking about some mysterious something or other shooting missiles at them. He thought they would need McCoy once they got to the origin of the missiles.

"The Fabrini…" Kirk remembered where he now sat on the bench in Sickbay. "They lived on this ship." He looked at Chapel. "Bones suggested we leave him there to help them get to their destination."

Chapel nodded. "But Dr. M'Benga wasn't due to the Enterprise yet."

"He should have told me." Kirk reached out to move McCoy's hand before it might roll and dangle off the edge of the biobed, but his fingers merely hovered near the cold flesh before retreating.

Chapel opened her mouth and then closed it. She knew McCoy had planned to tell Kirk upon his return.

The start of Alpha shift that day marked a few days into the eighth month of McCoy's disease. He did his job as he always had, though he took a shift off to sleep in his cabin every day. His on call shift was spent almost completely asleep in his office unless his assistance was needed. Chapel entered Sickbay soon after he had in time to observe him administering a hypospray. The bluish tint to his skin made her lips purse into a thin line.

McCoy set about sterilizing and then refilling the aspirin hypospray before returning it to its place. "You should know, I'm retiring."

Chapel wondered if Kirk knew. Most likely, Chapel presumed; since McCoy was here and Kirk was off at some conference as a Starfleet representative. The planet they orbited preferred to pick the closest captain to their planet to represent Starfleet at such an event. Enterprise had been moving through the area when the word came through the channels.

"I'm going to tell Jim when he comes back, and then catch a passenger ship," McCoy continued. He looked at her. He appeared exhausted in a way different from his exhaustion at the beginning of their adventures in space. "I wanted you to hear it from me."

"Thank you," Chapel managed to say and walked over to collect information from Delta shift from a data port near McCoy. "I appreciate it." Then they went about their day as any other until Beta shift.

"Nurse Chapel! Dr. M'Benga!" one of the science ensigns burst out of McCoy's office mid-shift. He almost collided with Chapel as she moved towards the exclamations.

"Dr. M'Benga is with a patient, what is it, Ensign Ward?" Chapel asked.

"Dr. McCoy…I was asking him to sign off on the experiment I did in your lab and he just – "

Chapel was in motion. She moved past the ensign and punched a few buttons on the lock to McCoy's room. The door soon parted and remained open. She found the doctor facedown on the floor. He was pale and sweat stood out on his brow. Chapel began to scan him with the scanner sitting upon his desk, and shouted out into the hall. "Hull! Seung!" she called for the medical staff she knew would be nearby. This was followed by orders, get her a stretcher, call M'Benga, get an operating biotable prepped, and any other relevant task. She helped Seung haul McCoy up onto the portable stretcher. Hull met them after prepping. M'Benga was soon at their side and ready. Once on the table, McCoy's heartbeat went from faint to silent.

They tried. They really tried and for a moment, there was a thump and the biobed lit up before plunging back into silence. The readouts were stationary, marking the time in the biobed's almost cryptic pattern of circles, lines, and arrows. Chapel looked to M'Benga. She could feel Seung and Hull watching both of them.

"14," M'Benga read the time off the display, "23." He continued speaking for the recorded record, "Stardate 2268.8." He pressed a button on the biobed to send that information to the system where he could retrieve it upon autopsy.

"Chapel," M'Benga met her eyes, "I need you to," there was the sound, all small ding to indicate someone had returned on the transporter, but when there was no call to Sickbay to indicate medical was needed, the doctor finished, "to take him to a cooler." He continued to hold her gaze a long moment. Hen then looked to Hull and Seung who began to clean up the medical paraphernalia around the body.

Chapel nodded, understanding M'Benga's unspoken order. She went to find if Kirk was aboard or still planetside.

"Joanna…" Kirk breathed as an afterthought after processing Chapel's report on the manner of death. His eyes took in McCoy's body again. "Did she know about it?"

"I don't know if he told her," Chapel replied. The poor girl was off working on a planet so far away from their current location. Chapel wondered if Kirk would bend protocols so Joanna could be present for the funeral, if that was even possible. She doubted the captain even knew himself yet. She took a breath and then stated slowly, "I don't want to rush you, Captain, but you can accompany Dr. McCoy to the doors to the cooling room if you are not ready." She squeezed his arm and rose from the bench, letting her body remain close in case he wanted something to steady his ascent from the seat. He got up shakily, putting his hand on the biobed briefly when he was fully standing.

"I…I'll say goodbye here," Kirk said, his eyes flickering to McCoy's face.

"I will make preparations to move," she paused and then decided on the pronoun, "him," instead of calling McCoy the body. Once near the entryway to the autopsy room, Chapel glanced back. Kirk was leaning over McCoy with his hand over McCoy's heart, whispering something to him, his lips barely moving. Chapel looked away and went to retrieve the equipment she needed.

**The End**


End file.
